Moises Absalón Pastora, Details of the Moment, August 20th 2018
I was talking this weekend with a friend who remarked that, as a small business owner, he was breathing more freely because he felt the country was returning to normal little by little. He felt that people’s spirits were touched with increased hope because, at least on the horizon, despite their losses, a new beginning was taking shape, a new chance, or what amounts to the same thing, the challenge of not giving up.
This friend, who has a small hotel in Granada, told me the city once more savors the aromas of chicha and vigorón, that in the central park the backpackers are appearing again, that there are more horse drawn carriages at the Alhambra, that the nocturnal freshness of the promenade is reviving, that people in cars are heading more frequently towards the beach to catch the breeze off the lake and that, in general, little by little, the Grand Sultana is on the way again to being that city where families take over the pavements with their rocking chairs from which they talk about everything and everybody-
With the characteristics specific to each place, the self-same thing is happening in other cities where the locals going about their business want to leave behind with a single stroke all the things that depressed us and, by their infamous nature, shook the people awake so they realized everything that was happening had turned into a nightmare leading nowhere.
My friend told me that he regarded as a positive pointer for the future the attitude of the government not to stay looking back and risking turning into a pillar of salt and also that internally it is necessary to promote a policy of stimulus that will have the same effect as reactivating all areas of activity so as to make good as quickly as possible all the damage the terrorism caused us, so as to return again to what we had before last April 18th.
But this friend also commented to me that, although inside the country we could once more become familiar with peace, an element impossible to ignore is the international pressure translated into OAS unhappiness with the Nicaraguan government. His concern seems legitimate to me because anyone with eyes to see shares it, but also anyone with the analytical capability can put that reality in its true perspective.
For that reason, I want to focus today’s commentary on the international arena because I think this country’s citizens fully understand our own reality and we are clear that the people who tried to impose a coup d’etat, with their frustration now turned to defeat, are left only with a campaign outside the country aimed at placing the Ortega-Murillo administration in the dock accused of the violent crimes promoted by the elite coup mongers themselves, so as to create conditions that will politically weaken Nicaragua’s constitutionally elected government.
José Martí used to say that in politics reality is invisible, but the international battle is clearly under way to wipe erase any trace of the truth of Nicaragua’s reality. A great deal of noise reaches us from outside the country in the form of stereophonic distortion emitted from Washington with the complicity of our country’s citizens who as nationals have lost all shame, going cap in hand to our nation’s greatest enemy and, since they cannot possibly beat the ruling party electorally, offering in exchange complete and total surrender of our sovereignty.
We hear a lot from some communications media, who are in no way independent, saying that the majority of countries in the OAS are voting against Daniel Ortega. But what they should really say is that the United States is doing so because, since the death of Hugo Chavez, the empire at first remembered Latin America existed not to offer help ,but rather to take advantage of the leadership vacuum left by Venezuela’s former President and to gradually undermine the ALBA bloc of countries who showed us that our North is not the North but the South. Hence the infiltration of the imperial eagle in Venezuela, Brazil, Argentina, Ecuador, Bolivia, Cuba and Nicaragua as politically progressive nations joined in a solidarity based alliance with the objective of fighting in each one of those countries against poverty largely caused by the greed of Uncle Sam.
When one looks at the brazen presidency of the OAS, currently a Costa Rican, trampling on the statutory processes of the OAS to rig a puppet show clearly condemning us not with good reason but by trickery, one is not seeing Latin America voting against Nicaragua but, rather, the imperial eagle imposing its might as right along with its hemispheric servants, hatefully sinking its claws into our country merely because we have dignity and know how to stand up to those who come after us with sticks put in the hands of marionettes cloned from the DNA of Adolfo Díaz or Enrique Bolaños.
What did we do to the United States?
Has it been a sin that until last April 18th we were the country with the third highest sustainable growth in Latin America, apart from Panama, now in crisis, and Dominican Republic which has its own tourist particularities?
Did we do wrong in putting a brake on the migration facilitated by Costa Rica from its territory and thus protecting the security of our neighbors in the Northern Triangle and that of the United States itself?
Did we do wrong using our precarious, limited resources to prevent the flow of drugs to the empire, turning ourselves into a retaining wall on behalf of the planet’s most drug addicted consumer country?
Or did we do wrong being for more than a decade the most stable, peaceful and secure country in the region with a full democracy unrecognized only by the perennial election losers?
The problem in Nicaragua for the most extreme sections of the US empire is not the nonexistent dictatorship, which doesn’t even rate authoritarian-lite, because if it did and what happened here had taken place in the US, a whole crowd of people would have been given the electric chair. The problem here is a Daniel Ortega with exceptionally strong leadership derived not from the Presidency but from a Sandinista movement many had thought would fall apart in disarray with a mere burst of noise. To the contrary, it ended up politically and ideologically more united and certain in defense, not of its government, but of its political project.
“If you don’t owe them, you don’t fear them”, the saying goes and Daniel Ortega has demonstrated it beyond doubt. When the gargoyles unleashed their hatred and someone uttered the word “dialogue”, he said “ok let’s talk”. And when they mentioned mediation and witnesses he, in good faith, suggested the Episcopal conference, although two of the bishops turned out to be vandals. When they muttered about a Truth Commission, he had one set up. When they talked about the Inter American Commission for Human Rights, he said “welcome”. When people from the United States asked to come and meet with Nicaragua’s President, they were able to do so. And when the international Press wanted to hear from Daniel Ortega himself his government’s version of events, they interviewed him with a fanfare of bells and whistles.
Internationally whats going on is a not-so-subtle dance with a step forward, a step back, taking a chance and thinking the better of it, but in terms of timing not crude swipes, using intelligence and thoughtfulness. Because politically what’s going on is more like a chess game where the other side listens terrified hearing “check”, “check”, “check” with ever greater frequency, after they had thought they could get what they wanted in a matter of days by simply shrieking loud enough, like that irresponsible kid who on day one of the National Dialogue said it was a table not for talks but to receive the government's surrender.
Since I have ended up using metaphors from the scientific game I should note that in order to be able to compete at chess it is essential above all to be familiar with human nature and have an understanding of the psychology of your opponent. I think the accumulated experience of the Sandinista movement overflows with a great deal of both. For which reason, it is just a question of time before it says to its adversaries, “Check Mate”.
God bless Nicaragua!